User fees are fairer than raising taxes

KINGSLEY GUY SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Benjamin Franklin told us, "In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes."

With the Florida Legislature considering a $20 charge for registering burial plots, the aphorism perhaps should be amended to "nothing is certain but death, taxes and user fees."

If a user fee is used to pay for a government service that bears a connection to the fee itself, charging people for services can be a better way for government to raise revenue than broad-based taxation.

Tuition to a public university is a case in point. Do we refer to tuition as a tax? Of course not.

We don't refer to it as a user fee either, but that's essentially what it is, since it's paid by the people who receive the benefit of the educational service.

For decades, tuition at Florida's universities has been among the lowest in the nation.

The people who graduate from a state university tend to have substantially higher incomes than those with just a high school education or less.

This year's gaping hole in the university system's budget could be filled through general revenue obtained by raising the sales tax. But that would place a higher tax burden on people who might never set foot on a university campus and who have to pinch pennies to survive.

The university user fee, a.k.a. tuition, will be going up this year, and that's fair. State education still will be highly subsidized. Given the increased income a state university graduate can expect to enjoy, he or she should be bearing tuition costs closer to the national average.

The Legislature also is considering raising the user fee to file a lawsuit. The civil court system needs more money, and increasing fees for people who use the courts is a good way to get it.

As an added benefit, increased fees could cut down on the filing of less than meritorious lawsuits intended to bilk a few bucks out of insurance companies and other deep-pocket organizations, because it would cost them more to settle than to fight.

My dueling colleague Stephen L. Goldstein contends that a tax by any other name is still a tax. Semantics aside, user fees in many instances can be a much fairer way for government to raise revenue than through broad-based taxation.